The Roy Hodgson Thread

[Whelan]

This is where we disagree. Everything other than his talent and ability to manage Liverpool Football Club is irrelevant. We're all really just guessing how it'll turn out.

 

I think my point is the reasoning behind our board targetting Hodgson, to me it has nothing to do with football, or rather, football and the good of the club are not the priority.

 

That is my concern, that is why I am against it, his record is not behind my anger, it is purely based on the boards decision to target Roy ahead of other alternatives.

 

So what he acheives is irrelevant to me, and, I think a lot of us have said the same thing, I think you are being harsh on yourself, and others, as far as I am concerned nobody should be feeling guilty if Roy wins the FA cup and gets us in the top four (something I think he will do by the way, although, dependent upon the players who stay).

[ScoureRich86]

Give Russell a piece of your mind..........Crusify this evil tw@t.

 

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[Kennys_spell]

I aint old enough, but how over/underwhelmed were people when Joe Fagan was appointed?

 

Joe Fagan was part of the dynasty at Anfield, he was bringing years and years of Liverpool experience to the job and the continuity that gave us meant we all had a warm and fuzzy feeling about Joe Fagan as the majority of fans knew he had the best Interests of the club at heart and would maintain "The Liverpool Way". I don't think anyone was underwhelmed by his appointment.

 

Don't forget - they were the days before SKY TV and the cult of instant Heroes and villains.

[mrw74]

Just been discussing the appointment with a manc fan at work and even he is amazed at how dumb and dumber are dragging our illustrious club down to a level where we should not be. I fear for the club, its not Roy's fault he's been approached, but if the results don't go our way in the early part of the season, he will be crucified by everyone.

 

I haven't felt this low about LFC for a long time but I just hope that the players respond to his appointment positively and start playing and acting like a team again.

[Kobayashi Maru]

Oh well. Good luck Roy, hopefully he succeeds beyond expectation.

 

My only expectation really was getting back to playing half decent football again, and hopefully the rest sorting itself out. His history suggests I could be disappointed, but hopefully I am wrong and has the players playing to their strengths.

 

I do like the idea of his 'Repetition' ethos when it comes to coaching. At times last season the players looked bereft of any ideas and disjointed to the extent they looked liked they had barely played with each other previously. Hopefully, this can be corrected and we look more fluid in our play.

[Kennys_spell]

No, it's called "sensible"

 

I'm not going to demand you call it the same thing as I do - but I wouldn't expect you to demand I do that either.

 

Although given the state of the club, the Leeches demanding transfer profits year on year, the reduced funds he initially has for transfers, the percentage he will get back from sales to use for strengthening of the squad. I would have thought that anyone who was "Sensible" would have run a mile from the job unless their Ego dictated otherwise.

[Sandman]

Disappointed with this appointment. To me it seems like we're settling for mediocrity, and that's never a good thing.

 

The article posted above about Roys training methods repetition, the focus on shape etc, sounds identical to Rafa's training methods. So I guess that's a good thing.

 

We have a tricky start to the upcoming season, so it's important that we hit the ground running. Unfortunately with so much about our club in a state of such uncertainty, it's going to be a difficult start for the new man.

 

Good luck Roy, we're counting on you to keep hold of our star players, work with minimal investment in the squad (this summer's going to be big), and yet have us be competitive with teams that have improved this summer while we have stagnated.

 

Hopefully you'll be up for the challenge, and we'll all look back at this trepidation and wonder how we could have ever doubted your quality.

 

All the best, and Welcome to Liverpool Football Club.

[Guest ian garro]

GC

 

As an attempt to connect the extremes within our support that's quite a Herculean effort!

 

But extremes there were and extremes there are. Still. You might be better advised taking that sabbatical.

 

Strictly as an observer I'll be absolutely fascinated by what happens next. As a Red whose life it is affecting, I'm beginning to think a decision to shunt football into the sidelines of my life isn't far away.

 

I'm at the age where my dad started to prefer cricket. That's out, as it bores me to tears. Whenever I whinged about some defeat or other he'd just mutter "8 years in the second division" and I'd clam up. When the 60's and 70's glory arrived, he was made up obviously but he felt like he'd earned it. Our generation has never had to 'suffer' that way.

 

But what he never had to put up with was £40 a ticket, a relentlessly screeching media and pampered players on simply mind-boggling wages, you at least felt like you belonged. In the last decade our managers have been treated like Gods by some, largely as a result of the contempt for the modern footballer and symbolised by the reaction to England's latest debacle. For some, enough is enough.

 

We've been spoilt. This club only won 5 major trophies in its first 72 years, then won about 25 in two decades! If it's changing back to what's normal, so be it, but being fleeced and treated like dirt should not ever be part of the deal.

 

Liverpool FC, you've been a major part of my life since I was a boy but you're fast becoming a germ on a microscope slide. Something whose ugliness and disease is grimly fascinating but ultimately destructive.

 

Roy Hodgson may be good but he can't do anything about that.

 

 

Good post.

 

I'm at that point as well I think. I've had a season ticket for over 20 years, and this one was the first where I had to sit down and actually weigh up the pros and cons of not renewing. I did it in the end, but more out of habit, and fear of being roped into DIY, gardening or pointless shopping trips on a Saturday afternoon, than looking forward to the season.

 

It's hard enough that the football's in a mess, without the feeling that you're having the piss took out of you by the Club as well.

[zico]

Lads, he's here now, there is nothing we can do about it. Yes, he is the man the owners wanted for the wrong reasons, but while not a top level manager, he is still a decent manager so lets not give the owners what they want, which is a divided fan base more worried about arguing with each other then putting pressure on the owners, and show a united voice in support of the playing and coaching staff of the club and against the ownership.

 

If that's the only reason to support him, I'll reserve my support until he's earned it.....

 

Hicks and Gillett are also here now as our owners, but anyone who supports them are cunts - FACT

[aws]

GC

 

As an attempt to connect the extremes within our support that's quite a Herculean effort!

 

But extremes there were and extremes there are. Still. You might be better advised taking that sabbatical.

 

Strictly as an observer I'll be absolutely fascinated by what happens next. As a Red whose life it is affecting, I'm beginning to think a decision to shunt football into the sidelines of my life isn't far away.

 

I'm at the age where my dad started to prefer cricket. That's out, as it bores me to tears. Whenever I whinged about some defeat or other he'd just mutter "8 years in the second division" and I'd clam up. When the 60's and 70's glory arrived, he was made up obviously but he felt like he'd earned it. Our generation has never had to 'suffer' that way.

 

But what he never had to put up with was £40 a ticket, a relentlessly screeching media and pampered players on simply mind-boggling wages, you at least felt like you belonged. In the last decade our managers have been treated like Gods by some, largely as a result of the contempt for the modern footballer and symbolised by the reaction to England's latest debacle. For some, enough is enough.

 

We've been spoilt. This club only won 5 major trophies in its first 72 years, then won about 25 in two decades! If it's changing back to what's normal, so be it, but being fleeced and treated like dirt should not ever be part of the deal.

 

Liverpool FC, you've been a major part of my life since I was a boy but you're fast becoming a germ on a microscope slide. Something whose ugliness and disease is grimly fascinating but ultimately destructive.

 

Roy Hodgson may be good but he can't do anything about that.

 

Similar to how I feel and it's not just close season blues. My enthusiasm for the "beautiful game" is lower than it's ever been.Normally I'd be thinking about transfer targets and looking forward to the Arsenal game but I'm really not arsed at the moment.

 

On the player front I'd like to keep Reina and Carra but the rest I wouldn't shed a tear over.

 

Hodgson is a decent bloke and a good manager so good luck to him. My only real expectation for any manager is he does a good job with the resources he's given.

 

My problem with appointing him (and with mutually consenting rafa) is that it's primarily being done for poltical control reasons. Whether we're cutting slack for Purslow, Broughton or hodgson,in the end we're really cutting slack for the owners.

[goatboy59]

I do like the idea of his 'Repetition' ethos when it comes to coaching. At times last season the players looked bereft of any ideas and disjointed to the extent they looked liked they had barely played with each other previously. Hopefully, this can be corrected and we look more fluid in our play.

 

If it also involves the words "Glen Johnson" and "cattle prod" I'm all for it.

[d.k.E.]

Another interesting Hdgson thread, not in the Liverpool context but as England manager. To be honest, I find these attributes appealing for Liverpool:

 

Roy Hodgson could provide the solution to England's identity crisis | Richard Williams | Football | The Guardian

 

 

Roy Hodgson could provide the solution to England's identity crisis

 

As England lurch from scientific foreigner to tub-thumping patriot, Hodgson is the only candidate to offer the best of both words

 

The quotes write themselves. "He treats us like grown-ups." "He's put a smile back on our faces." When the FA eventually gets around to replacing Fabio Capello, those words, or something very like them, are likely to be the first uttered after the players emerge from their initial exposure to the new man's methods, with the undisguised suggestion that it was the last fellow's personality that was the problem all along, rather than the intrinsic quality of the squad at his disposal.

 

• Follow the Guardian's World Cup team on Twitter

• Sign up to play our daily Fantasy Football game

• Stats centre: Get the lowdown on every player

• The latest team-by-team news, features and more

 

And when the man who put the smile back on their faces and gave them the key to the drinks cabinet is gone, his replacement will be welcomed with praise for his rigour, his iron discipline, his refusal to indulge a bunch of overpaid superstars, Until he, too, finds the task too great.

 

The business of appointing England managers is a drama as formal as a Noh play. When one method is perceived to have failed, there is a reflexive swing to the opposite extreme. In this the FA is encouraged and even led by the fans, who perceive in every defeat the failure of an entire set of values. A scientific foreigner is followed by a flag-waving Englishman, and then by a foreigner again. And so on.

 

One reason for this bipolar behaviour is the lack of a system for appointing managers within the FA. The age-group teams have their coaches, but little consideration is given to the possibility that a suitable candidate may rise up through the ranks to take control of the senior squad.

 

Continuity gives the comforting impression of a governing body in control of its own affairs. Sometimes it comes up with the right result, but not always. It was the principle through which Germany appointed Jupp Derwall to succeed Helmut Schön in 1978 and Berti Vogts to take over from Franz Beckenbauer 12 years later; all of them won major trophies, but the Mannschaft are now successfully in the hands of an incomer, Joachim Löw. A similar preference for long-term planning and in-house promotion carried France to the World Cup in 1998 with Aimé Jacquet and to the European championship two years later with his former assistant, Roger Lemerre. But this summer, with Raymond Domenech, the system broke down.

 

When the FA appointed Steve McClaren, Sven-Goran Eriksson's assistant, four years ago, it hoped to secure the benefits of continuity with the added ingredient of an Englishman's natural patriotic fervour. But the man and the moment were wrong, temporarily discrediting the idea of promoting a locally produced coach who had achieved decent results with an unfashionable club.

 

That formula may now be back in the minds of those FA men who control the national team's affairs, assuming they are of a mind to end their relationship with Capello. But if they want Roy Hodgson to replace the Italian, they had better hurry up. The 62-year-old Fulham manager is so much the flavour of the summer that it was a surprise he did not turn up at Glastonbury to introduce Shakira.

 

It seems that the power-brokers at Liverpool, having taken a few weeks to reflect on the next step after the dismissal of Rafael Benítez, are also keen to see Hodgson, who may even be installed at Anfield by Thursday, according to some reports. It would seem a perfect appointment. But then Hodgson currently looks like the perfect appointment to every vacancy in English football, particularly to the one that may or may not soon involve the national side.

 

His CV is an impressive one – if no match for Eriksson's or Capello's – and he has just finished a season in which he took Fulham, a club held in widespread affection, to the final of the Europa League. But there is more to it than that. What Hodgson represents, at this particular moment, is a yearning for a return to older values – in Liverpool's case those of the legendary Boot Room, in England's those of Alf Ramsey and Bobby Robson.

 

He is a football man, in the wonderfully plain phrase used by Arthur Hopcraft, once of this newspaper, as the title of his classic 1968 survey of the game in its birthplace. At a time of uncertainty, when it is becoming apparent that a Spanish or Italian coach of high achievement and vast earning power offers no guarantee of success, he seems to offer a certain kind of security.

 

But Hodgson is a football man with an added dimension of sophistication. Thanks to an early decision to seek his fortune in such places as Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Finland, Denmark and the UAE, he speaks five languages and is widely respected in European football. So he may offer, in a sense, the best of both worlds.

 

But why would Hodgson now seem an ideal candidate for two extremely demanding jobs when he was not considered last time they fell vacant? The answer lies in the fundamental insecurity afflicting English football, in a long-running crisis of identity that would best be eased, in the case of the national team, by the appointment of a modest, perceptive, articulate man with a deep understanding of the culture of the players who would be at his disposal, and a knowledge of their deficiencies as well as their merits. And then we can reassure ourselves that, after all, no World Cup has ever been won by a team with a foreign coach.

[Whelan]

Richard Williams is a prick! A florid, smart arsed, Guardian reading, Tofu eating, Gay experience, ethnic clothing wearing, prick!

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

For the sake of the club YOU HAVE TO HAVE YOUR RESERVATIONS proved correct. Anything else will entice the Leeches to hang around.

 

I certainly don't agree with that.

[Kennys_spell]

I certainly don't agree with that.

 

Fair enough - I strongly feel that to be the case.

 

Only time will tell.

[Antynwa]

Good Luck Roy.

 

You're walking into a shit storm, and you'll need every bit of help you can get.

[torahboy]

Another interesting Hdgson thread, not in the Liverpool context but as England manager. To be honest, I find these attributes appealing for Liverpool:

 

Roy Hodgson could provide the solution to England's identity crisis | Richard Williams | Football | The Guardian

 

 

Roy Hodgson could provide the solution to England's identity crisis

 

As England lurch from scientific foreigner to tub-thumping patriot, Hodgson is the only candidate to offer the best of both words

 

The quotes write themselves. "He treats us like grown-ups." "He's put a smile back on our faces." When the FA eventually gets around to replacing Fabio Capello, those words, or something very like them, are likely to be the first uttered after the players emerge from their initial exposure to the new man's methods, with the undisguised suggestion that it was the last fellow's personality that was the problem all along, rather than the intrinsic quality of the squad at his disposal.

 

• Follow the Guardian's World Cup team on Twitter

• Sign up to play our daily Fantasy Football game

• Stats centre: Get the lowdown on every player

• The latest team-by-team news, features and more

 

And when the man who put the smile back on their faces and gave them the key to the drinks cabinet is gone, his replacement will be welcomed with praise for his rigour, his iron discipline, his refusal to indulge a bunch of overpaid superstars, Until he, too, finds the task too great.

 

The business of appointing England managers is a drama as formal as a Noh play. When one method is perceived to have failed, there is a reflexive swing to the opposite extreme. In this the FA is encouraged and even led by the fans, who perceive in every defeat the failure of an entire set of values. A scientific foreigner is followed by a flag-waving Englishman, and then by a foreigner again. And so on.

 

One reason for this bipolar behaviour is the lack of a system for appointing managers within the FA. The age-group teams have their coaches, but little consideration is given to the possibility that a suitable candidate may rise up through the ranks to take control of the senior squad.

 

Continuity gives the comforting impression of a governing body in control of its own affairs. Sometimes it comes up with the right result, but not always. It was the principle through which Germany appointed Jupp Derwall to succeed Helmut Schön in 1978 and Berti Vogts to take over from Franz Beckenbauer 12 years later; all of them won major trophies, but the Mannschaft are now successfully in the hands of an incomer, Joachim Löw. A similar preference for long-term planning and in-house promotion carried France to the World Cup in 1998 with Aimé Jacquet and to the European championship two years later with his former assistant, Roger Lemerre. But this summer, with Raymond Domenech, the system broke down.

 

When the FA appointed Steve McClaren, Sven-Goran Eriksson's assistant, four years ago, it hoped to secure the benefits of continuity with the added ingredient of an Englishman's natural patriotic fervour. But the man and the moment were wrong, temporarily discrediting the idea of promoting a locally produced coach who had achieved decent results with an unfashionable club.

 

That formula may now be back in the minds of those FA men who control the national team's affairs, assuming they are of a mind to end their relationship with Capello. But if they want Roy Hodgson to replace the Italian, they had better hurry up. The 62-year-old Fulham manager is so much the flavour of the summer that it was a surprise he did not turn up at Glastonbury to introduce Shakira.

 

It seems that the power-brokers at Liverpool, having taken a few weeks to reflect on the next step after the dismissal of Rafael Benítez, are also keen to see Hodgson, who may even be installed at Anfield by Thursday, according to some reports. It would seem a perfect appointment. But then Hodgson currently looks like the perfect appointment to every vacancy in English football, particularly to the one that may or may not soon involve the national side.

 

His CV is an impressive one – if no match for Eriksson's or Capello's – and he has just finished a season in which he took Fulham, a club held in widespread affection, to the final of the Europa League. But there is more to it than that. What Hodgson represents, at this particular moment, is a yearning for a return to older values – in Liverpool's case those of the legendary Boot Room, in England's those of Alf Ramsey and Bobby Robson.

 

He is a football man, in the wonderfully plain phrase used by Arthur Hopcraft, once of this newspaper, as the title of his classic 1968 survey of the game in its birthplace. At a time of uncertainty, when it is becoming apparent that a Spanish or Italian coach of high achievement and vast earning power offers no guarantee of success, he seems to offer a certain kind of security.

 

But Hodgson is a football man with an added dimension of sophistication. Thanks to an early decision to seek his fortune in such places as Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Finland, Denmark and the UAE, he speaks five languages and is widely respected in European football. So he may offer, in a sense, the best of both worlds.

 

But why would Hodgson now seem an ideal candidate for two extremely demanding jobs when he was not considered last time they fell vacant? The answer lies in the fundamental insecurity afflicting English football, in a long-running crisis of identity that would best be eased, in the case of the national team, by the appointment of a modest, perceptive, articulate man with a deep understanding of the culture of the players who would be at his disposal, and a knowledge of their deficiencies as well as their merits. And then we can reassure ourselves that, after all, no World Cup has ever been won by a team with a foreign coach.

 

 

 

 

That's alright then. "A football man", employed in a game called 'football'. How can he go wrong?

[goatboy59]

If we piss Richard Williams off by taking England's successor, that's a plus.

 

If Richard Williams thinks he's any good, that's a minus.

 

Fucking hell, why is nothing ever simple?

[TheBitch]

[Guest PurpleNose]

Richard Williams is a prick! A florid, smart arsed, Guardian reading, Tofu eating, Gay experience, ethnic clothing wearing, prick!

 

His one redeeming feature is that he isn't Daniel Taylor.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

Fair enough - I strongly feel that to be the case.

 

Only time will tell.

 

Exactly, no point arguing about it now. We'll have to wait and see what transpires.

[rebel23]

people seem to easily forget that Benitez attracted world class players like Torres here in the first place, even though he underperformed with the team last year he nontheless has built a valuable squad and could attract the best players in the world

 

we're yet to see the kind of players Hodgson can attract but my guess is they wont be as good, a more workman like and gritty type approach. I dont understand the appointment at all

[rebel23]

double post

[goatboy59]

Liverpool played no part in "attracting" those players then?

[seven of eleven]

Jesus shitting Christ

 

Ha Ha most of you didn't understand what I ment I feel sorry for you all brainless mugs.

 

Better manager Rafa was better coach Roy is better all rounder. :drool: